Attal Primary Gambit Reopens 2027 Race as France Pushes EU Defence

France's 2027 presidential contest gained a new fault line on Sunday when Gabriel Attal, the Renaissance leader and former prime minister who declared his candidacy on May 22, said the centrist bloc may need a primary to avoid splitting its vote and handing the runoff to the far-left La France Insoumise and the far-right National Rally. Attal has convened a liaison committee with Edouard Philippe's Horizons and Francois Bayrou's MoDem, but Philippe -- the figure closest to him ideologically and an early favourite for the presidency -- has refused, saying there is "no place for this primary," and the Republicans rebuffed it too, with Bruno Retailleau's deputy Francois-Xavier Bellamy ruling out falling in behind Attal. The maneuvering plays out against surveys showing falling trust in President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu and rising support for the National Rally's Jordan Bardella.

In European defence, Andrius Kubilius, the EU commissioner for defence and space, warned that Russia could produce 7 to 9 million drones in 2026 and train up to 1.6 million operators by 2030, urging Europe to treat drone production as a strategic priority; he said France has begun reorienting its military planning toward drones but called the effort fragmented and insufficient. On the industrial side, Airbus signalled it would accept a "two-fighter solution" that lets France and Germany build separate aircraft under the 100-billion-euro Future Combat Air System, a programme launched in 2017 as a symbol of Franco-German unity and now strained by disputes over nuclear requirements and industrial leadership, with tensions spilling into the parallel Main Ground Combat System tank project.

On trade, France led a group of five EU states -- with Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Lithuania -- in a non-paper sent to the European Commission on Friday calling for more aggressive use of tariffs and safeguard investigations against abusive practices, implicitly targeting China, and proposing a new "resilience tool" and the addition of "economic security" as grounds for opening trade-defence probes. The push, which builds on Macron's earlier call for EU trade powers akin to the US Section 301, arrives as Brussels prepares an internal strategy debate on the competitive threat from China.

At home, an unusually early heatwave broke records across the country. Meteo-France recorded 31.9C in Paris on Saturday -- the first reading above 30C this year -- while more than 20 towns logged their highest-ever May temperatures, including 33.8C in La Rochelle, 33.7C in Fontenay-le-Comte and 32.8C in Bordeaux, running 12 to 16C above seasonal norms. Authorities placed 13 western regions under a yellow heat alert, the first May warnings since the system began in 2004; a runner died in the capital and about 10 others were hospitalised after a race in a Paris suburb, with temperatures forecast to reach 35C on Monday. The heat coincided with a joint statement from the G7 national science academies warning that Arctic summer sea ice has shrunk by half since the 1970s, with cascading effects on sea levels and extreme weather, issued ahead of the G7 summit.